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“House Augustus was always strong, I’m sure you know that. Even when Mars was little more than a mine for helium-3. They bribed or killed their way into owning most of the governmental contracts. And as their pockets swelled, so did their influence. They became, along with several other families—including the Bellona and my own—the lords of Mars. There was one family of greater power, however, named Cylus. They controlled the ArchGovernorship and were favored by the Senate and the sitting Sovereigns.
“When your master, then simply called Nero, was seven, his father found himself in dispute with Julius au Bellona. Nero’s father attempted to have the Browns who served the Bellona poison the entire family at supper. The plan failed. A housewar began.
“Nero’s father summoned his bannermen and led them against the Bellona and the ArchGovernor Cylus, who had declared his forces for Julius au Bellona. The sitting Sovereign did not intervene, and instead allowed the two families to go to war. Eventually, Nero’s father found himself besieged in Agea when his fleet was destroyed and captured around Phobos.
“Cylus put Nero’s father to death. Only young Nero was spared from the punishment visited on House Augustus. He was spared so that an aged family that had partaken in the Conquering did not disappear from history. It is said that ArchGovernor Cylus even gave young Nero grapes to quench his thirst because there was no water as the city burned around them. After that, he raised him in his own court.
“Twenty years later, Nero, who had always been considered an honorable and honest man, much unlike his wicked father, asked for Iona au Bellona’s hand in marriage. She was the youngest and favorite daughter of old Julius.”
He stares up at water droplets falling from the needles of overhanging evergreens. “I knew her well. My sons were her playmates. And I knew Nero too. I liked him, even if he was a little cold as a child.
“With hopes of mending the lingering wounds of past generations and making Mars strong and unified, ArchGovernor Cylus agreed. Bellona married Augustus.
“It was a beautiful wedding. I was there representing the Sovereign as the Rage Knight. And I had a wonderful time of it. I’d never seen Iona so happy as she was in that stern young man’s arms. But that night, when the Bellona family returned to their estate with the rest of their family, a package arrived. Inside, old Julius found his daughter’s head. Grapes stuffed in Iona’s mouth along with two wedding rings.
“He summoned his daughters and son
s, including Cassius’s father, and flew to the Citadel to ask for justice from ArchGovernor Cylus, as he had twenty years prior when the Augustuses first rose up.
“But instead of his old friend, he found young Nero on the ArchGovernor’s throne, backed by Praetorians and two Olympic Knights. I was amongst them, having been told that Cylus was a threat to the Society by my Sovereign. I did as I was commanded. The House of Cylus was wiped out and stricken from record.
“I found out later, Nero contrived an agreement with the daughter of the sitting Sovereign. You know her as Octavia au Lune. Younger then, she convinced her father to give Nero the throne of Mars and his revenge; in return, she earned Nero’s support when she led the faction that overthrew and killed her father five years later. That is the man you started a war for.”
“I didn’t know this,” I say quietly.
“History is written by the victors.”
Lorn looks at me and the lines on his face seem to deepen. “I don’t want to go to war, Darrow. In my time, I have seen a moon burn, because one man would not bow. I have led a million warriors shot from warships to invade a planet. You cannot begin to understand the horror of it. You think only of how beautiful it will be. But they are men. They are women. They have families. And they die by the thousands. And you will be helpless to protect even the best of your friends.”
“Ah!” He points uphill. “There’s Icarus.”
Rain drips from the pines as we push through the lower tree boughs to find Icarus, Lorn’s pet griffin, sleeping in a great bed of moss on a high promontory inside the small forest. Icarus’s paws curl into his body. His wings curve around him as he sleeps—iridescent and glittering with droplets of water. His great eagle’s head is nearly larger than I, one of his eyes half the size of my skull. The Carvers made him well.
“He looks peaceful when he sleeps,” Lorn says.
“He’s bigger than any I’ve seen,” I say, unable to conceal the awe in my voice.
“You’ve not been to the pole of Mars or Earth, then.”
“Where did you buy him?”
“Martian Carvers made him for my family. Damn that fashionable Zanzibar twit. Icarus is of the same genus as the beasts in the high aeries in Mars’s north pole. The ones they use to terrify Obsidians into believing magic is real.” He strokes the sleeping giant. “Are you still in love with the ArchGovernor’s daughter?” He glances back at me hopefully. “Is that why you do this? I heard about her and the Bellona.”
“It isn’t about what happened between her and Cassius.”
“No?” he sighs. “I could have understood that, at least. You were sloppy in that, you should know. The Winding Wisp would have done him in three moves.”
“I wasn’t sloppy. I was making a show.”
“Sloppy. Violets are showmen. Did I train you to be a showman?”
I move past him to pet Icarus. “So you do care about me.”
He does not answer me for a spell, and it’s then that I know the moment is nearly upon us. “In another life, you would have been one of my sons, Darrow. I would have found you earlier, before whatever happened that filled you with this rage. I would not have raised you to be a great man. There is no peace for great men. I would have had you be a decent one. I would have given you the quiet strength to grow old with the woman you love. Now all I can give you is a chance. Icarus,” he booms.
His griffin stirs by his side, its amber eye showing me my reflection. The ground shudders as the creature moves, uprooting a tree as easily as I’d pull a hair.
I move back from the beast, unsure of Lorn’s intentions.
